


These Frameworks Labelled Home

by mruk, vala (valinorean)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-12
Updated: 2013-02-12
Packaged: 2017-11-29 02:39:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/681774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mruk/pseuds/mruk, https://archiveofourown.org/users/valinorean/pseuds/vala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur is dead and someone needs to tell his family. Following a job that had gone terribly wrong, Eames heads to Arthur's childhood home to tell Arthur's family of his death when Cobb refused to do it. There, he finds solace with the people who loved Arthur as much as he did. Eames learns of Arthur's past, his life away from dreamshare, and, painfully enough, what might have been between them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Frameworks Labelled Home

**Author's Note:**

> This is written for Inception Big Bang 2013! BIG thank you to my betas [Katie](http://kjp-013.livejournal.com/) and [incandescent](http://incandescent.livejournal.com/). Also to [mruk](http://mruczanka.livejournal.com/1107.html) for volunteering to pinch-hit art for my fic. Title is taken from a line in the song _This is a firedoor never leave open_ by The Weakerthans. :)

Arthur is dead.

Someone needs to inform his family.

This is how Eames finds himself standing in front of a homey two-story house in a small suburban town in Chicago on a mild September afternoon. He hesitates to ring the doorbell, uneasy about who might greet him. He wonders for a moment if they’d look like Arthur, before mentally smacking himself. _Of course_ they’d look like him, they’re his family.

Eames stamps his feet to ward away the chill creeping up his legs. It’s barely past summer; the air shouldn’t be this cold. But the winds are bitter and he can’t help but feel the hollowness in his chest from missing a certain— _no_. He stops the thought. He isn’t strong enough to let such things go through his head yet. He probably never will be.

Dominic Cobb is a special kind of bastard. The last time Eames talked to him was in a screaming match three weeks after Arthur’s death. Like any decent human being, Eames had insisted that they inform Arthur’s family of his demise and had asked Cobb’s help to track them down. He knows Arthur wouldn’t hesitate to do the same for either of them had their circumstances been reversed. But Cobb hadn’t even looked Eames in the eyes when he refused to do it the last time they met.

“You think Arthur would want us to lie about the life he lived?” Cobb had asked angrily.

“Yes, he’d even expect it. He’d do it to protect his family,” Eames said with certainty. “But we won’t because it isn’t what he deserves. ”

“What do you plan on saying, then? That he was an internationally wanted criminal with mob bosses, kingpins, and ex-military terrorists looking for him in almost every country he stepped in? That he went into people’s minds, stole they secrets, and sold them to the highest bidder?”

“Don’t you think they at least deserve to know that he’s dead?” Eames raised his voice. “They have a right to know, Cobb. You know they do. Arthur would’ve done the same for you; at least give him the same courtesy.”

Cobb stared at Eames hard, his jaw working. Then he turned away.

“Wouldn’t you want to know, too, if it was one of your children?” Eames asked, frustrated.

“It isn’t the same!”

“It’s _exactly_ the same!” Eames shouted. Then he sagged, feeling the fight leave his body altogether. “Please, Cobb,” Eames pleaded softly. “Please.”

Cobb shook his head sadly and began to walk away, their conversation over.

“You’re a coward, Dominic Cobb,” Eames called after him. “You’re Arthur’s friend and he did so much for you. He stuck with you when you had no one. He risked his life to get you home!”

Cobb stopped and turned around. The look he gave Eames was almost soul wrenching. “I lost my wife to dreamshare, and now my closest friend. I’m done dreaming, Eames. I don’t want to have anything to do with this ever again.”

That had been the last time Eames had seen or heard from Cobb, over three months ago. It took Eames this long to even find the smallest clue about Arthur’s real name. It was a painstaking process, and he’s accumulated more debts than he could ever hope to pay back in his lifetime. Now that he’s found it, he thinks perhaps that he’s known all along, as if the information had been buried somewhere deep into his subconscious. Or placed there.

Now, standing here in front of Arthur’s childhood home, a place he never thought he’d get to see, Eames knows that all the effort has been worth it.

He raises his hand to ring the small bell by the door when he notices a shadow moving through the room. He waits to see if anyone will come out, thinking perhaps someone has already seen him. But no one comes to the door and he raises his hand again.

There is a shuffling of feet, then a slow but confident stride of light footsteps. The curtain on the window beside the door moves slightly.

“Who is it?” a woman’s voice calls out.

“A friend,” Eames answers.

He is met with silence for some time, before he finally hears the sound of a bolt sliding. The door opens, but not all the way. A woman stands just beyond the door, as if half ready to slam it on his face if he so much as breathes wrong. He takes her in: short-cropped hair, a lean body; she’s bit young to be Arthur’s mother, but she couldn't have been anyone else. Then he nearly falters when he sees a startlingly familiar set of brown eyes, but he’s able to hide his surprise quickly enough with a forced smile.

“Hello,” he says with affected confidence. “My name is Charles Eames. I’m a friend of your son, Arthur.”

 

==

 

Eames isn’t one to ask people in the business about their families, or at least not the ones he respects; it’s an unspoken rule between dreamers. They practice an illegal, if secret craft, and there’s something to be said about honour among thieves. They’re all criminals, even the most principled ones, and none of them want their families involved in that illicit web. Only those with malicious designs—hardened criminals, double-crossers, or your run of the mill arsehole—would ever have need of such information.

Of course, it’s inevitable that some of them would slip, especially during drunken conversations following successful jobs or spectacular failures. A pending divorce with an unfaithful spouse, a proud father showing pictures of his newborn, a protective sister distraught that a sibling has become addicted to dream dens. They all try not to pay too close attention out of common courtesy.

It was in these kinds of conversations that Eames slowly learned about Arthur’s family: a brother who married his high school sweetheart and now has two children, a sister who lives alone in New York that he sometimes visited, an estranged father who passed away five years ago and Arthur never bothered to attend the funeral. He suspects Arthur, too, had taken note of Eames’s stories about his family (he’d bet his cut from their last gig that Arthur had an entire _notebook_ dedicated to it). He wouldn’t be surprised if the man knew where to find them. He doesn’t mind, though, since none of them ever mentioned a strange man inquiring after him. He knows Arthur gave him the same kind of privacy.

But of all the stories they share, Arthur had never once mentioned his mother. He thought perhaps that she was dead, which was why Arthur never talked about her. Eames couldn’t have been farther from the truth.

“Arthur and I first met when we were still both in the military,” Eames tells her. It isn’t exactly a lie. What he doesn’t say is that they only ever saw each other in dreams.

“Oh,” Arthur’s mother says. “And from what unit are you, dear?”

While she tries to keep her expression politely curious, it’s far too easy for someone like Eames to see the very subtle signs when her face closes off and becomes guarded. She stares at his face, as if trying to memorize it, and she doesn’t invite him in.

He nods in approval. Arthur certainly did a good job of teaching her to be alert and wary of strangers.

“I’m from Her Majesty’s Army,” Eames says in his friendliest voice. “We met during a training exercise.”

“I see.”

Arthur’s mother isn't exactly how Eames imagined she would be. Granted, he’d been imagining somewhere between a New York fashionista and university president, given Arthur’s propensity for wearing suits and ruling an extraction team with an iron fist. She’s youthful, Eames thinks, and must have married young. He can see bits of Arthur in her—in the way she stands carefully, neither cowering nor overly confident; in the gentle tilt of her head as she considers him; and in the way she makes eye contact, seemingly giving him her full attention, but the light tapping of her fingers against her leg shows complete awareness of her surroundings—all subtle things he used to think were uniquely Arthur’s.

Eames launches into light conversation about the weather, but Helen, as he shortly learns when she introduced herself, isn’t someone easily fooled. Her voice is gentle, yet Eames can sense there is steel behind it. He suspects she isn’t the kind of woman that people say no to. They make pleasant small talk, yet all the while he can see the impatience growing in her eyes. Eventually, she politely cuts off his inane prattle.

“I’m truly sorry you came all this way, but Arthur doesn’t live here anymore.” She doesn’t offer to take a message or a way to get in touch.

“I know,” Eames says softly. “But I didn’t come here to see Arthur, I came to see you.” The distrust in her eyes becomes evident, and she tenses visibly when he says, “May I come in?”

Helen hesitates, and he can see her internally debating, perhaps thinking that it’s past time she slammed the door on him. Eames doesn’t do or say anything to convince her otherwise, the way he usually does. She isn’t a mark. He waits as she eyes him distrustfully, but she must have seen something in the way Eames carefully draws back, trying not to frighten her any more than he already has, because she eventually opens the door wider and allows him to step inside.

She watches him warily as he looks around politely while she leads him to the living room. She gestures for Eames to sit on the couch and she takes the armchair across from him. Every now and then her eyes dart to the liquor cabinet an arm’s reach away. There’s probably a small weapon somewhere inside it, no doubt hidden by Arthur as a precaution.

Eames is momentarily side-tracked as he thinks of Arthur hiding all sorts of lethal weapons in his childhood home. How many guns has Arthur placed in this house? Perhaps knives that he passed off as letter openers? A ghost of a smile appears on Eames’s lips as he tries to imagine the usually impeccable point man digging a shallow ditch in the back garden to hide a small cache of semi-automatic weapons.

He hears Helen clearing her throat and Eames immediately turns his full attention back to her.

“You said you have some news for me? About Arthur?” Her voice cracks at the mention of her son’s name and he can see the uneasiness in her eyes.

Eames takes a deep breath. He feels bad for her having to hear it from someone she barely knows, much less trusts. There isn’t any way to break it gently, but he tries anyway.

“I’m sorry, but Arthur’s dead.”

 

==

 

Thirty minutes later, Eames finds himself trying not to listen to a loud argument in the kitchen while two toddlers stare at him, wide-eyed. He gives them a small wave and they scamper to hide behind their mother’s legs.

The moment Eames had told Helen about Arthur’s death, she excused herself and made a phone call somewhere he couldn't see. She came back quicker than she would have if the call had been able to connect. The deep frown on her face only confirmed it.

“Forgive me but—It’s just that we’ve not heard from Arthur for some time,” Helen said. “It’s difficult for me to believe—how. How exactly did you know this?”

“I saw it with my own eyes.” Eames was proud to note that his voice didn't crack.

Helen then called her other son, Michael, who—as Eames discovered—lives half an hour’s drive away and, in a remarkably calm voice, told him to come immediately. She didn't talk to Eames again. Instead, she went to the kitchen and came back with dark coffee (exactly the way Arthur used to take it, Eames couldn’t help but notice) and a plate of biscuits. They did nothing but nibble on the crusts and sip their drinks, waiting for Arthur’s brother to arrive. When Michael finally burst through the front door, he immediately ushered Helen into the kitchen, only pausing to give Eames a cursory glance, leaving his wife and children in the living room, presumably to keep an eye on him.

Eames can hear muffled fragments of their argument through the open doorway. Of how Helen had refused to hear how Arthur died without either of her children there with her, of how Michael is furious that she can so readily believe a stranger.

“I’m sorry about that,” the woman says, gesturing to the noise behind her. “It’s difficult for them to believe that he’s—I mean, no one’s heard from Arthur for nearly two years.”

Eames tries to smile but ends up with a half-grimace. “I’m not surprised to hear that, actually.”

“So,” she says, trying for small conversation. “Have you known Arthur long?”

“Seven years, I suppose,” Eames says automatically, not needing to count. “Eight if you count the time in the military.”

“Oh,” she says uncomfortably. She doesn’t speak to him again.

It’s the word, he thinks. Helen had the same look when Eames first told her he met Arthur in the military. He wonders what about it that makes them on edge whenever it’s mentioned.

The uncomfortable silence is only broken by the raised voices from the kitchen.

“You don’t even know him,” they hear Michael shout. “You can't just go around trusting everyone who shows up at your door!”

Michael’s wife smiles at Eames embarrassedly, and Eames shrugs as if to say, ‘It can’t be helped.’

“You know I don’t do that,” they hear Helen snap severely. “But he knows Arthur from the military.”

There’s a tense silence for a second before Michael curses loudly. They hear a door being wrenched open and then being slammed, rattling the objects hanging on the kitchen wall. Helen emerges from the kitchen, her face red and her eyes on the verge of spilling.

“Are you okay?” Michael’s wife hurries to her side.

“I’m fine, Nora,” Helen says gently. “But I’m afraid Michael isn’t.”

They hear another door slam, the front door this time, accompanied by heavy footsteps marching towards them. Michael emerges carrying a double-barrelled shotgun, which he aims directly at Eames’s chest.

“Michael!” Helen shouts.

Eames stands, slowly raising both hands, yet remains unalarmed.

“Nora, take the kids upstairs,” Michael orders, his eyes never leaving Eames.

Nora carries the smaller child and all but drags the elder boy up the stairs, their faces stricken. When they’re completely out of sight, Michael steps closer to stand between Eames and Helen.

“Now,” he says, “you’re gonna tell me what the hell you’re doing here, and then you’re gonna walk out the door and leave us the hell alone.”

“What’s the meaning of this?” Helen demands, her voice low steely.

“This man, Ma, claims he knows Arthur from the military. If he’s one of them, then he’s one of the bastards who’s fucked Arthur over.”

“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, mate,” Eames says carefully, at the same time Helen says, “What do you mean, Michael?”

“It means,” Michael says through gritted teeth, “that he’s one of them that turned Arthur into a criminal.”

Helen’s face has gone ashen and Eames curses inwardly. He’d thought they didn’t know about Arthur’s line of work and had planned on breaking it to them slowly. It complicates things for Eames, knowing that he has to convince them that he’s not the lying bastard he usually is. Not this time, anyway.

Helen darts to the liquor cabinet, where she unlocks a hidden panel at the back, and she pulls out a loaded Glock. She holds it with the confidence of someone who knows how to handle a gun, and for a split-second Eames thinks she’s going to shoot him. Instead, she carefully places it on the coffee table in front of her for Eames to see, yet still too far for him to reach.

“Five years ago, Arthur came by on one of his rare visits,” Helen begins. “He told me to keep this here, always loaded, always within arms reach. He said to be careful of anyone who comes looking for him. He didn’t tell me anything; said it’s safer if I didn’t know.”

Eames still clearly remembers what happened five years ago. They were fast becoming known as the best two-man extraction team in the dreamshare community. Still high and drunk from the success of a previous extraction, they both took a job from a corporate giant with an unsavoury reputation. But they’d been too cocky. The job fell through and a price was placed on their heads. It was the first time they had ever had to run since getting out of the military program.

“You’d better start explaining, Mr Eames.”

 

==

 

Eames tells them how Arthur died.

They were in Vienna when it happened. Another job gone wrong; it was hardly surprising. Being in the business that long meant they’d had their fair share of fucked-up jobs, and they had protocols set for any eventuality, safe houses in every major city around the globe, and cash. Lost of easily accessible and untraceable cash, in any place they could possibly end up in.

So when Eames rendezvoused with Cobb and Arthur at a safe house in Budapest, it hadn’t occurred to them that the place might not be _safe_. It was Arthur who first entered the house and triggered the explosive. Eames barely had time to shout _‘run’,_ before the room was enveloped in a huge fireball. Eames, who was farthest from the door, was thrown to the ground by the force of the explosion. Cobb had tried to get to Arthur, but the fire was too overwhelming. A huge portion of the ceiling had collapsed and blocked his way. They couldn’t get to Arthur without trapping themselves within the rapidly growing fire.

But the sirens were wailing, and people were gathering. They were still wanted criminals and there was no time to recover Arthur’s body. Cobb had to drag Eames away when he nearly choked from smoke inhalation. The last Eames saw of Arthur, he was on the floor of a burning building, lifeless and unmoving.

 

==

 

“I knew he was on the run from the law,” Michael says. “And not just because he went AWOL. When he ran from the base, I got a phone call from him. He told me to never, under any circumstance, try to come and find him.”

Eames nods. It was what he did too when he first got out. It’s what they all did.

“He said they’ll say he’s MIA from a mission gone wrong,” Michael continues. “And true enough, that same afternoon two officers came and asked questions. And I said to them, ‘If he’s out there fighting the war and gone missing, then why’d you come here looking for him?’ They thought he might’ve come home. But he never really left, did he?”

Michael’s shoulder droops, his hand loosening its grip on the shotgun as he sets it aside. His face is lined with agony. Helen reaches out to cradle Michael’s head to her chest, and Eames looks away when tears began to fall from both mother and son.

As he leaves them to their grief in private, he recalls a long-forgotten conversation.

 

==

 

It was hardly surprising that it was Arthur who got out first. Eames first heard it as a rumour that there had been trouble with their American counterparts. The joint training had been halted immediately after that. He’d lost contact with Arthur entirely, since they only ever met within dreams, but when he heard that a US operator had allegedly gone rogue and taken a PASIV device with him, he’d laughed. Only Arthur could have pulled off something like that.

A year later, Eames got himself out as well, but with much less fanfare. He began sniffing out old contacts from the criminal world and he’d learned there was work to be had in illegal dreamshare. He’d hopped on board without any hesitation, hoping he’d find Arthur on the other side of the law now that they were both wanted by their respective governments.

It was five years before they met again. Five years before they saw each other for the very first time outside a dream. And it was all thanks to Mallorie Miles.

“A point?” Eames asked his ex-girlfriend sceptically over the phone. “Mal, hardly anyone uses a point. Now thieves, on the other hand, are always on high demand.”

He could feel Mal laughing silently at him from over a city away. “You’ve not seen him yet, Eames. What do you thieves do? Take a mark and muck about in his head, hoping you’d find what it is you are looking for?”

“Darling, that’s the only way you’ll ever get anyone’s secret without resulting to physical means. You of all people should know that.”

“Ah, but this point man is different,” Mal said coyly. “He does not only take point in the dream, but does topside as well. He’ll give you everything you need to know about your mark. He’ll make sure your architect builds the right dream for you. And he’ll make the mark spill all his secrets without needing to pry it from his dying body.”

“So he’s a planner, researcher, and bodyguard all rolled into one? He sounds like a dream Mal, too good to be true.”

“He does, doesn’t he?” Mal said. “But I assure you he is very real. He’s revolutionizing the role of the point man in this business. Think about it, he’ll be able to make extractions in a matter of minutes, what used to take hours topside. Soon, a point will be indispensable and you, my darling Eames, will be obsolete.”

“Then I’ll just have to find a new role, won’t I?” Eames huffed.

“Just come and meet him, Eames,” Mal pleaded. “I’ll be there too.”

Eames snorted. “I don’t think your new boyfriend would appreciate me being there.”

“Husband,” she corrected him. “He’s my husband now.”

“ _You married him?_ ” Eames asked, aghast.

“Yes. Now come ‘round the Mandarin around seven and I’ll introduce you to our point,” Mal said in a tone that brooked no argument. “And do wear something nice.”

 

==

 

“This is all my fault,” Michael says, his head resting on his hands, both elbows propped on the table. They’re now sitting around the dining table, food laid out before them in generous servings. Helen had insisted on them eating, but their dinner plates sit barely touched on the table, none of them having the appetite to eat so much as a few bites. The children have already been sent back upstairs. “If I hadn’t— If only— Arthur would still be with us here.”

“Don’t, Michael,” Nora says, wrapping her arms around her husband. “You know that isn’t true. Arthur chose that life.”

“But he didn’t!” Michael insists. “Dad chose it for him. It should have been me. It was _supposed_ to be me.”

“Patrick is a…stern man,” Helen says grimly. “I’m not defending what he did, but he never meant to do wrong.”

And they tell Eames everything.

They tell him of Arthur’s father, a former military man. He had wanted someone to follow in his footsteps. But Michael had had plans of his own; he left home at eighteen and escaped a life of service. Arthur, who was only fourteen at the time, had promised their father that he’d do it instead. He swore to serve his country with pride, the way their father had. He enlisted after high school, passed basic training with flying colours, and after a year in Afghanistan, he was recruited into a secret project. All communication had ceased after that.

Project Somnacin, Eames thinks bitterly. Everyone who ever had anything to do with it had lost the possibility of ever living a normal life again. They had been doomed the moment they signed up. The project is still classified even now, and none of their families know about it: especially not the families of soldiers who killed themselves, thinking they were still in the dream.

Then they tell him of Arthur’s strange disappearance, of how Arthur never came home even when he was only a city away. And they tell him of the time he _did_ come home and they hardly recognized his face, his clothes, or the name he answered to when he was on the phone with business associates.

They tell Eames all this, as if he has any right to know these things about Arthur, things that people in their business would literally kill to possess. But none of this information matters. Not anymore.

“Look where it got him. He was a criminal, Ma,” Michael continues. “Stealing from people, running from the law, never able to come home because of how many people wanting him dead or locked behind bars.” Then he turns accusatory eyes at Eames. “What was it he did, anyway? Drug trafficking? Smuggling? What did you make Arthur do that he couldn’t come home to us? We don’t even know who he was anymore.”

“Michael,” Helen admonishes him. “Even if all your accusations are true, Mr Eames is still a guest of this house.”

“It’s all right,” Eames says, pacifying, and turns to Michael. “It isn’t like that at all. Arthur is—he was good at what he did, the best.” Eames hesitates, then takes a deep breath and looks at each of them. “Have you ever heard of dream sharing?”

“Dream…sharing?” Helen echoes.

Eames nods. “It’s a highly classified technology developed by the military, which allows one to enter another’s mind through lucid dreaming. That’s where we met, doing military training together in dreams.”

“But that’s…impossible,” Helen whispers in disbelief.

“Then how did Arthur end up on the other side of the law?” Michael asks.

“He wanted to get out. We both did,” Eames says. “We killed each other in countless training scenarios before we even knew the other existed. We thought we were just killing projections.” Eames shakes his head sadly. “And I tell you, dying in dreams is just as painful as in real life.”

There is a gasp, and Nora’s hand flies to her mouth in horror.

“When we got out, there’s only one place for people like us to go, with that specific skill set. We—yes, we—” Eames says when he sees Michael narrow his eyes at him, “work for big corporations, stealing things from people’s minds. Yes, we do steal from people, but we’ve never done half the things you imagined.”

“That actually sounds even more sinister than your average bank robbery,” Michael says as he sits back and regards Eames. “How do I know you’re not stealing anything from my mind right now?”

“Well, first you’d have to be asleep,” Eames points out. “And you’d need a PASIV device, which I don't have right now.”

Eames looks around the table, but none of them seems convinced.

“Look, it isn’t always like that,” Eames says wearily. “Sometimes we help people too. We go inside dreams to wake people who’ve been in coma for years, or something as simple as finding out if spouses are cheating on each other, and sometimes…sometimes we even repair relationships between fathers and sons.

“Arthur was good at what he did,” he says. “He took care of the people in his team, making sure nobody got hurt, and would sometimes take a bullet for them, if it came to it. That’s what you should remember about Arthur, not some imagined version of whatever horrific thing you think he’s done.”

Eames knows he’s a very unscrupulous man; he’s done some bad things in his life. He’s never had to defend what he did before, because it didn't seem to matter. But here, in the brightly lit kitchen of Arthur’s childhood home, he’s forced to acknowledge his sins.

“We are dreamers,” Eames says at last. “We’re there for the dream, foremost. The rest is just necessity.”

Helen turns away and covers her mouth. Michael crosses his arms and looks at his feet, frowning. Nora gets up and heads upstairs to her children, not saying anything.

They’re tired. It’s been a long day for everyone.

It’s been more than a year since he first began this long and complicated journey to find Arthur’s family. He’d been so caught up with this blind drive that he’s startled with how abruptly it ended. He feels like he’s floundering, not knowing what to do next with his life.

He’ll go after this. He’ll probably drink himself blind, then go to Yusuf’s dream den to see if he has any compound that can give him a long dreamless sleep. He might visit Cobb too, just to let him know that Eames succeeded without his fucking help. And perhaps Cobb will have enough decency to pay Arthur’s mother a visit.

Eventually, Nora comes back down with the children and tells Michael that they need to head home. There is a moment of tense silence as husband and wife communicate silently.

They’re still afraid of him, Eames thinks. As they should be. They’re afraid for their children, if not for themselves.

“You’re right; we better go,” Michael finally says, getting up. “Ma?” he says uncertainly, and pointedly looks at Eames.

“Don’t worry about me,” Helen says, waving her hand at them. Her eyes are bloodshot and her voice coarse, but she is still able to manage a smile for her grandsons. She kisses them both and embraces Michael and Nora in turn. “You take care of yourselves.”

“But—”

“It’s fine.”

Helen says it in a way that’s so reminiscent of Arthur saying ‘ _I will shoot you in the kneecaps if you so much as sneeze,_ ’ that Eames isn’t able to hold back a small chuckle. Helen turns to him with a curious smile and soft eyes.

Michaels looks at them both. “All right,” he finally relents. “But I’ll call you in the morning.”

Eames offers to clean up, giving the family some privacy as they walk to the door, saying their farewells and making promises of returning the next day. Later, when the sound of Michael’s car has faded, Helen stands beside Eames as he hands her clean dishes to dry.

The lines on her face are more visible now, her back drooping and not nearly as straight as when she first greeted him that morning. And her eyes. The light in her eyes that looked so remarkably like Arthur’s and shined as his did has finally gone out.

“Arthur never had many friends.”

Eames glances sideways at her. She’s staring out the kitchen window, but her gaze sees nothing. They’re turned inside her mind, looking at memories of Arthur that Eames has no hope of seeing without resorting to his chosen profession.

“But the few friends he had, they all loved him,” she continues, this time looking at him. “Some were fiercely protective, like Michael. Some incredibly loyal. I—we’ve not told you of Sheila, have we?”

Eames shakes his head. He only knows her as Arthur’s older sister, nothing more.

Helen nods. “She brought her boyfriend home once, said he was the love of her life. But when her boyfriend saw Arthur, he called him—well, terrible things. It upset her so much, she dumped him that same day. I saw her crying at the back porch and Arthur consoling her. But she smiled, shook her head, and told him never to let anyone tell him what he can and can’t be.”

Eames shakes his head fondly at the thought. Of course there was nothing Arthur couldn’t do. Not even the loss of gravity could keep him from giving everyone the kick.

“Tell me, Mr Eames,” Helen says, turning to face him fully.

“Please, Charles is fine,” Eames says. It doesn’t feel right to be called Eames by Arthur’s mother.

“All right,” Helen concedes. “Tell me, Charles. Are you… Were you Arthur’s lover?”

The question blindsides him and he isn’t able to cover the surprise on his face.

“I’m sorry, I just thought…” She looks at his eyes, searching. “The way you talk about him. He never really told us, though I suspect he told Sheila. And I’m his mother. I know things about my children even when they try to keep them from me.”

Eames doesn’t know how to answer. The answer is very obviously ‘no,’ but it isn’t only that. One doesn't just drop a well-paying job and risk having a bounty on his head just because Arthur calls with another offer for a job. One doesn't just jump on a plane to halfway across the globe when he hears that Arthur is in a bind he can’t get out of. And most importantly, Eames doesn't keep an extra totem in a secure Swiss bank, only to give the key to the safe to Arthur for safekeeping.

He tells her the truth.

“I wanted to be,” Eames voice cracks as he smiles at her sadly, “but I never had the chance. And now I’m too late.”

 

==

 

There had been a job once, in Spain. It had been frustrating and difficult, with long hours and even longer time spent going under for preparations. It wasn’t one of Arthur’s typical jobs, because anyone with half a brain could see that it was a disaster waiting to happen. Eames didn’t know why Arthur took it. A favour perhaps, or a debt owed. He didn’t care. Only that Arthur had asked him to come along, and it didn’t matter that the pay was shit or the extractor was an arrogant bastard: when Arthur asked, Eames came.

When the job inevitably fell through, as they all suspected it would, the rest of the team scattered, leaving Arthur to clean the mess. Eames had stayed behind, even when they literally had to run from bullets flying over their heads. They stole a car and drove to the countryside, and found themselves hiding in the loft of an old abandoned barn, far from prying eyes or hired goons.

Eames should have known that there was something wrong when they were able to get away easily. They found themselves in a different sort of bind when the clouds began to darken and the distant sound of thunder was heard. They were cold, tired and hungry. They had nothing save the PASIV device, the clothes on their back, and a nearly empty tank in the sedan that Eames stole. The wind blew hard that night with an incoming storm that threatened to rip the roof of the barn away. In the musty smell of old hay and chickenfeed, they lay curled together, intimate and whispering half-delirious reassurances to each other, trying to drive away the chills of a cold autumn storm. They survived the night and staved off hypothermia, and got out of the country two days later.

They never spoke of that night again.

 

==

 

“I should head out soon,” Eames says as they clear the last of the dishes. “It’s getting late.”

He wipes his hands on the tea towel Helen handed him and returns it with a murmured thanks. They walk to the front of the house while Eames tries to remember the way to the nearest hotel. Perhaps they have a decent bar. He doesn’t think he’ll be able to get properly pissed on tiny whisky bottles alone. He’s already buttoning his coat when Helen gently calls his name.

“Why don’t you stay the night?” Helen looks at him, head slightly tilted and studying him carefully. “You’ve travelled far, I’m sure. You need a place to rest.”

He does. He’d been following every last lead he could find on Arthur’s family with such single-mindedness that when he finally caught the first promising trail, he’d hopped on the first flight to Chicago without a second thought and rode a cab straight here. He hadn’t thought to book a hotel and only had enough sense to deposit his duffel in a locker in the airport.

He swallows. “I—no, I wouldn't want to impose,” he says sincerely.

“Please,” she says. She takes one of Eames’ hands and clasps it in both her own. “Please, Charles, I insist.”

It’s an invitation, but the tightness in her voice betrays hers. There is panic in her eyes and her voice begs him to stay. She doesn't want to be alone, and Eames knows exactly how she feels. It was the same feeling he’d had in the first few months after Arthur’s death, except the feeling never really went away.

Her face is open, so full of fear, that he wonders if she sees the same desolation in his eyes that he sees in hers.

“All right,” he relents.

He can stay one night; it can’t hurt.

He’s just so tired. So very, very tired.

==

 

Fire.

There’s fire everywhere and a large explosion knocks him off his feet.

He sees a body engulfed in flames. He tries to reach it, but the smoke and flames make it impossible.

There is a gust of hot air and the fire rises in a dangerous burst. Eames is tangled in a wave of bright orange flames, burning… burning… burning…

He wakes with a choked cry, throwing the blankets off to the foot of the bed. He breathes in ragged gasps and sits up, shaking. He takes in the strange room, the strange lights streaming in from the bay window, and the unfamiliar calls of the night insects of Arthur’s hometown outside the window.

It might as well have been a dream.

He reaches for his totem, the only familiar thing in this strange place, running his fingers around the edges smoothed by use and tracing the rough markings he carved at the centre. He feels his chest constrict as he confirms with crushing heaviness that this is reality.

A reality where Arthur is dead.

It’s been a long and painful journey. He thought he’s learned how to keep the ache hidden away. But being hidden means it’s never really gone.

He clutches his totem tightly against his chest, and for the first time since the day they ran and left Arthur’s prone body at the safe house, Eames allows himself to grieve.

 

==

 

Helen greets him quietly at the breakfast table the next day with toast, eggs and coffee. He can still see the traces of tears that dried on her cheeks and knows that she cried the whole night, just as he did. She looked like she aged years overnight.

“How are you?” Helen asks, voice hoarse.

Eames barely manages a smile. “I’m doing well, considering,” he says.

He’s sure he pulled that off convincingly. With a well-placed compliment or a reassuring smile, a forger like him can get away with much. Yet Helen takes one pitying look at him and he knows that she sees through the lie in his words.

“It’s been difficult for me to accept this,” she says. “Sheila will be sad, I’d expect.”

Devastated would have been more accurate.

“But to tell you the truth,” she continues, “nothing much has changed, save for the knowledge that Arthur will never come visit anymore. He was gone almost all the time and the times he _did_ visit were few and far between.”

Eames knows this to be true. He knew when Arthur was on a job, which was _always_. He knows because more than half the time Eames was there working with him. He knows that Arthur had two safe houses in the States that he hardly used. He wonders if Arthur even had a house he considered as his home. He thinks he saw Arthur more in a year than Helen had seen him since he left home.

Which is why nothing would change for them. Not for Helen, not for Michael and Nora, not for Sheila who visits almost as frequently as Arthur does.

But for Eames, everything will change. Everything _has_ changed.

Suddenly he needs to get out. He feels sick. His throat is closing and he can’t breathe. He barely mumbles an apology before rushing out to the back porch, his chair clattering to the floor.

 

==

Helen finds him an hour later, chain smoking and staring blankly at the neatly trimmed back lawn. She was kind enough to give him space, and quite frankly, it's embarrassing to be imposing his presence this long on a grieving mother. His own mother had taught him better than this.

“I’m so sorry for earlier,” he says contritely. “I’ve been imposing on your hospitality for far too long. I should take my leave.”

He expected her to say no. He had hoped she’d say no. Instead she gracefully nods her head in acquiescence and allows him to lead the way to the front door. He takes one look back and hesitantly asks, “Will you be okay?”

She pats his shoulder gently and smiles. “Don’t you worry about me, I have things I need to attend to. There’s also much to be done in the house that can take my mind away for a little while until Michael comes by. I suspect we’ll be busy after this, so I’ll try to take it easy while I still can.”

They head out of the house and Eames is reluctant to walk away. He doesn't know what to say. Should he promise call? To visit? Perhaps when they’ve recovered Arthur’s things from his many illegally obtained addresses? He doesn't think Helen would appreciate any more of his presence. He’s a criminal, after all, and one with a price on his head.

A stray leaf falls and Helen looks up to the roof’s gutter. Then her eyes grows misty, her expression wistful.

“You know,” she says, “the last time Arthur visited was around this time as well. He was always a nice boy, helping me around the house, especially with those things I can't do for myself. I remember him climbing up to the roof to clean the gutter, and he refused to come down until he was completely done. I had to bring his dinner up to him.”

Helen shakes her head fondly at the memory. Eames can imagine it easily, the stubborn point man and his single-mindedness.

And Eames doesn’t know what makes him say it. Maybe it’s the melancholy of the voice of a mother longing for her wayward son’s return, or that yesterday he would have left her to it, but today she looks like she aged ten years, and despite her brave front, he thinks she’s about to fall apart.

“Would you like a hand with that?” Eames asks tentatively. “I have some time before I need to go.”

This is a lie. He doesn't have anywhere to be, nor had he booked a flight. He doesn’t have a hotel room to return to, and he doesn't have a bag to pack. He doesn't have any plans at all except to drink himself blind at the nearest bar he can find and pass out at the first motel he sees, now that he’s finally done with his self-imposed duty to find Arthur’s family.

Helen looks up, surprised, and the gratitude in her eyes is undeniable as she says, “Yes, I’d like that.”

And it _clicks_. Eames finally understands that it is _she_ who feels she’s imposing on him, coveting the company of the man who knows so much more about her son than she does. He understands how lonely she is because she has that look in her eyes and, if he dares look in the mirror, he knows he would see the same sadness reflected in his own gaze. Perhaps she told him that story to try to get him to stay because she needs him there. And it’s all right, because he’s more than willing to admit that he probably needs her too.

That night, after Eames has spent the entire day on the roof while Helen cooked up a storm so she could bring it up to him, Helen gestures to the liquor cabinet where one of Arthur’s favourite Glocks is hidden, and they both drink themselves blind.

Eames has to admit this is so much better than drinking alone.

 

==

 

The thing about Helen is that she is a frighteningly convincing woman, and she isn't the type one can easily say no to. If Eames had known that, he wouldn’t have been surprised to find himself still in Chicago nearly half a year after she first invited him to stay. But as it was, he didn't know what he was agreeing to at the time. It certainly makes sense where Arthur got his reputation for being an exacting point man, and he can’t help but be reluctantly charmed.

 

==

 

Eames doesn't remember much of the first few weeks. Most of his days are spent sleeping, his nights drinking. It feels like he’s living underwater, his movements sluggish, and he is never more than half awake. Sometimes Helen tries to rouse him, make him do easy chores like raking the leaves or doing a bit of gardening, just to let him have a bit of sunshine. But for the most part, she leaves him alone, possibly to deal with her grief in her own way.

What he remembers most are breakfasts. He drinks at night where she can't see, but somehow she knows because whenever Eames stumbles into the kitchen, Helen is always there with eggs, toast and coffee waiting for him every morning. One time, he unthinkingly asks why she never cooks anything else like pancakes and sausages.

She pauses for a bit before she answers. “This was what Arthur used to eat when he still lived here,” she finally says. “He refused to have anything else, and since he was the last to leave home, I became so used to preparing it for him every morning that it never occurred to me to cook anything else.”

The sudden image of Arthur sitting in this very kitchen, eating the same food he’s eating, comes to mind. It jolts him back to reality, like electricity surging through him, as he realizes he’s been living here with Arthur’s mother, eating her food, and being miserable all the time.

He feels like an impostor playing at being someone else’s son and doing a bad job of it. And though he’s done a hundred different forges of different kinds of people—good people and bad people, friends and enemies—he never thought he’d ever play at being Arthur.

He feels sick to his stomach.

“I—I’m so sorry,” he says. He wants to explain. To tell her that he didn’t mean to stay this long, didn't mean to burden her with his grief.

But she smiles, takes his hand and says, “Shared sadness is half sadness, but shared happiness is twice happiness.” And she gently pulls him to her and cradles his head on her shoulder. “While I would rather Arthur brought you home to introduce you, I’m thankful that I still got to meet you.”

Eames gratefully accepts the woman’s embrace, and is surprised to find that that wetness he feels on his cheeks came from his own eyes.

 

==

 

In the weeks following, Eames starts becoming his old self again, or at least starts acting _human_ again. He begins to help around the house, doing Helen’s groceries and other odd bits of chores. He makes friends with some of the people around the small town: the butcher who always has the latest gossip on whose kids are causing trouble, the kids who hangs outside the convenience store and always beg him to buy cigarettes (“No more more than one pack a day, it’s a bad habit!” he admonishes them), and the old lady and her young niece who run the flower shop where he buys fresh daisies each day.

And every time he tells Helen he’s leaving, she manages to find new tasks for Eames to do. Paint the fence or replace the rotting boards, fix the shingles on the roof, fix the plumbing in the basement. He never has the heart to say no. She may be missing Arthur, who usually does these things when he’s home. Or maybe she’s looking for an excuse to keep him there. The truth is, he’s secretly relieved to have an excuse to stay and vows he’s not going anywhere. Not any time soon, anyway.

 

==

 

Eames eventually starts poking around the house.

He’d refrained from doing it before out of respect for Helen’s privacy. But he’s been there long enough that can't help but try and look for Arthur’s old room. It isn't in any of the rooms across or down the hall from him. Helen’s room is the only bedroom in the first floor. Curiosity gets the better of him, and he begins to search earnestly for signs of it.

Then he finds it.

At the farthest end of the second floor, there is a small rope tucked away near the ceiling. Eames even has to get a short stick (that’s lying close by, perhaps for this very purpose) to hook the rope down. It dangles within arm’s reach, and when he pulls, a staircase that leads to the attic swings down.

“Well, that’s a pleasant surprise,” Eames murmurs to himself as he climbs the small stepladder.

He kind of expected it. It’s the only place in the house he hasn’t explored, so he _knows_ he’ll find the remains of Arthur’s old life here. But what he isn’t prepared for is the shock of actually seeing it all. Old movie posters, stacks and stacks of books, the odd trinket and piece of memorabilia, and on his desk is a very old, very obsolete Pentium III desktop computer.

Eames walks carefully, trying not to disturb the way Arthur’s things are haphazardly thrown around the room. Arthur isn’t exactly a slob, but Eames had expected him to be a bit more anal at keeping his room neat.

Eames pokes into Arthur’s things and for the first time learns bits and pieces about the man that they were never allowed to share in their line of work. Old photos of Arthur, sketches and cartoons he did as a child, football team trophy (unsurprising, Eames huffs), and a glee club group photo (which is surprising). He’s going through old school notebooks (still surprisingly intact) and reading Arthur’s English essays (still unsurprisingly bland), laughing fondly at some of his insights on Animal Farm and observing how his penmanship had changed over the years, when Helen pokes her head from the hole on the floor.

“Oh, you’ve finally found it? I was waiting for you to ask, actually.”

It says something as to how far they’ve come that instead of the usual heaviness, her eyes now show fondness, if a bit of sadness, as they begin talking about Arthur.

“His English essays are terrible.” Eames cheerfully holds up one of Arthur’s notebooks and Helen laughs just as he had hoped.

“He got half of his ideas from Michael and half from Sheila, then combined them together and ended up contradicting himself.”

“Paradox.” Eames grins.

“He was more into history and politics, I think.”

Eames eagerly picks up another notebook, this time on Social Studies. Helen walks around the room as if seeing it for the first time, just like Eames had. They spend a few minutes in companionable silence before Helen starts to head back down to the house.

But before she completely leaves him alone, she turns to look at him curiously. “Would you like to stay here in this room instead of the guest bedroom?” she offers.

Eames doesn’t sleep in the guest room again.

 

==

 

Sheila comes home sometime before Thanksgiving. He’s talked to her a few times on the phone whenever she calls and Helen is out. She’s nice, if a little condescending, and extremely nosy. She even asked him once if he’d ever jerked off to Arthur. Of course he has, but he isn't about to admit to that.

On the first Sunday after her arrival, Michael and his family drives over for brunch. There’s much screaming from the children (she is apparently their favourite aunt) and embraces that are a little too tight from Michael and Nora.

It’s inevitable that the topic of conversation would be about Arthur, and Sheila, nosy as she is, keeps asking about their highly illegal and glamorously criminal lifestyle. Eames indulges her with the less gritty stories, even that one time when they had fun running from the authorities, finding themselves in a circus and trying to blend in. And when he mentions the time they all had to rely on Arthur to time a simultaneous kick, they’re all curiously amused.

“Really?” Michael asks incredulously. “You know Arthur used to be really bad at Math in junior high. We even had to get him a tutor one summer.”

“I remember that!” Sheila nearly shrieks in delight. “He insisted it had to be someone from college who was a Math major because he didn't trust either of us.”

“It was that guy, right?” Nora says. “What’s his name? Derek? Darwin? Mrs Cooper’s son, the physics major?”

“Oh he was a nice looking young man,” Helen says to Eames. “Arthur got straight A’s the next term.”

“Did he?” Eames says, amused.

“Perfect scores in every test.” Michael shakes his head fondly. “I’ve always wondered if that’s when Arthur started—I mean…” He trails off and shares a look with Helen before looking at Eames.

“Oh, well, it was never a secret,” Eames says, immediately getting what he means. “At least to those of us who got to know him well enough.”

“We all knew,” Helen says. “Or at least suspected, but he never really told us. I suppose you can call it mother’s instinct? That and he never really brought a girl home to meet the family.”

Eames detects a bit of sadness in her voice. “I sincerely doubt Arthur would have brought _anyone_ home, given the kind of work we do,” he says consolingly.

“But you’re here,” Michael says pointedly.

“I am,” Eames says. “By my own choice.”

“Well _I_ knew about it,” Sheila interrupts. “From way back in high school, even.”

“And you never told us?”

“How?”

“I saw him kissing Corey Scott at the back of the gym in high school!”

The scandalized gasps from Michael and Nora are so comical that Eames wonders who this Corey Scott is.

“Isn't he that poplar Quarterback at Union?” Helen asks curiously.

Ah.

Sheila leans in eagerly, as if sharing fresh gossip. “I even tried following Arthur around to see if they were secretly dating, but either they were very good at hiding or it was a one time thing. I never saw them together after that.”

Eames can't help but wonder if that had been Arthur’s first kiss. Did they meet again in secret? Did they ever do more than share a kiss? A pang of bitter jealousy strikes him unexpectedly, the envy of something that can never ever be his.

Around the table they talk about Arthur’s antics as a child, and he laughs convincingly with the rest even as the hollowness in his chest grows.

 

==

 

Being a thief both in and out of the dream afforded Eames with many indispensable skills, such as lock picking. But Eames is not just a thief. He’s a very good one. And all good thieves know where to look for locks worth picking.

He isn't the least bit surprised when he finds a loose floorboard under the low bed. He even has to push the heavy bed out of the way just to be able to reach the floorboard and take out the small locked box hidden underneath. He makes easy work of the lock. Arthur obviously wasn’t worried about it being discovered by nosy thieves with a deft hand at lock picking.

Eames scans the contents with something akin to wonder. Old letters, photographs, a slightly deformed bullet that looks like was dug out of a gunshot wound, money in different currencies folded into tiny origamis (what’s with that?), and, surprisingly enough, Arthur’s old dog tags. Huh. He didn't think the stoic point man was into sentimentality.

Eames is about to close the lid and show the box to Helen when he sees it. There, tucked away in the corner of the old wooden box, is an object so achingly familiar, he’s both terrified and fascinated at the sight of it.

Arthur’s extra totem.

He freezes on instinct, as everyone is wont to do when such an object presents itself. But it doesn't matter now, does it? It _shouldn't_ matter. Arthur’s gone, and this totem has turned from a lifeline into a mere trinket. His left hand hovers hesitantly above the tiny red die, while his right dives to the pocket of his jeans where his own totem is.

What’s it like, he wonders, to touch and feel Arthur’s totem. To know the exact shape, weight and texture of _his_ reality.

But there is something so fundamentally wrong with touching Arthur’s totem that struck the very core of his beliefs. So much so that he takes one of the neatly folded handkerchiefs from Arthur’s drawer and refolds it into so many layers that when he finally uses it to pick up Arthur’s die, he hardly feels the shape at all. Then he wraps it some more, neatly this time with a bigger handkerchief, and tucks it in the other pocket of his loose jeans.

He finally closes the lid, takes a calming breath, and goes to show Helen the rest of the newly uncovered treasure.

 

==

 

“Oh,” Helen says softly as she lifts an old photograph from the lot. Her eyes are misty as she strokes the fading edges lovingly. It isn't that hard to figure out who the woman in the photograph is. Older, but still handsome. The strong jaw, the dimpled cheek. She looks in many ways like Arthur, and nearly identical to Helen. And then there are the eyes. They’re still the same beautiful shade of brown, piercing and intense.

“I thought I had lost this,” Helen says. “I didn’t know Arthur kept it. It was one of those we used for her funeral, and it was Arthur’s favourite.”

She gets up and walks to the low bookshelf filled with photo albums. He’s seen most of them, and particularly enjoyed the ones with pictures of Arthur missing front teeth or holding a football ball bigger than his head. He laughed at that one picture where Arthur had long shoulder-length hair.

But the album Helen takes out is heavier and worn. It’s filled with older photos, of a time when Michael was still the only child. She flips the pages until she comes to the one she’s looking for. It’s a page where a photo has very obviously been taken out, quite recently too if the brown acid stains are anything to go by. The photo in Helen’s hand fits perfectly at the centre of the collage.

“He needn’t have hidden it,” Helen says sadly. “I would have let him keep it.”

“Arthur likes to keep his cards close to his chest,” is the only thing Eames can think to say.

Helen flips a few pages of the large tome, and stops at one where she was holding a newborn, with a very young Michael and Sheila at her side poking the blanket. They spend the rest of the afternoon looking through old photographs, Helen reminiscing and Eames obliging.

 

==

 

Christmas, Eames thinks, is the bane of every family who’s ever lost a loved one.

This is the first in a long while that he won’t be spending in a hotel room while on a job, or on the run and dodging bullets. He’s never planned it before, but somehow jobs find their way to him during Christmas season. And Eames realizes with a sharp pang that this is the first Christmas in quite a long while that he won’t be spending with Arthur.

Not that they ever did things differently during Christmas. They tended to forget a lot of fancy holidays, especially since a lot of other criminals and businessmen got cranky if they didn’t see results (mostly thinking of their _own_ ruined Christmases). It isn’t unusual for Eames to be surprised at seeing holiday decorations at airports, where he’d usually turn to Arthur and ask, “When’s Christmas?” And Arthur would answer with a disinterested, “Three days ago,” or a “Tomorrow,” coupled with a look that clearly says ‘Seriously?’ and Eames would reply with a ‘Huh’ and that was that.

For Arthur’s family, however, it doesn’t seem as if there’s much change. Yes, the general melancholy of _knowing_ they lost someone is there, but no tradition is being disrupted. No Christmas treat unbaked, no decoration unhung, no carol unsung. As if Arthur didn’t even exist during Christmas.

_Because he was always with you, you twat._

He wonders if that makes him feel better or worse, or if Arthur had always deliberately planned it that way. It’s a nice thought, the latter.

“Catch!” Sheila calls Eames’ attention as she throws a soft lumpy package at him. Eames catches it by surprise and blinks. It’s a present. For him. On Christmas.

As if he’s part of their family.

“I—” He feels his throat close as he blinks away the burn in his eyes. He clears his throat and tries again. “Thank you,” he tells Sheila sincerely.

“Go on then, open it.” She gestures to the gift, grinning.

He tears into the wrapper and is delighted to find a thick and ugly jumper in clashing array of colours and patterns, and a crooked snowflake right smack in the middle. He absolutely loves it.

“Her speciality,” Michael says. “Ugly sweaters. She buys them specifically from a website that sells ugly sweaters.”

Sure enough, everyone’s holding up their own jumpers. Even the kids.

“Did Arthur use to get one too?” Eames asks curiously, thinking of the well-tailored suits Arthur prefers to wear.

“Yeah, but he’s special,” Sheila says with a twinkle in her eyes. “He gets the ugliest of the lot.” And they all laugh.

“Did he ever get you anything before?” Helen asks kindly.

No, Eames thinks. They hardly remembered it, much less took the time to buy each other gifts. Well, except for— “Once, a gunshot wound.”

Their faces are a mixture of incredulity and horror, and Eames can’t help but laugh at that. Soon enough, they’re all laughing, and if they think that Eames is just joking with the bullet wound, he doesn't bother correcting them.

 

==

 

It’s sometime in February when he accidentally finds it.

It’s a day much like any other. Eames is spending the time lazing in his room (he’s taken to calling it _his_ now instead of Arthur’s, but still keeps referring to everything as Arthur’s things) with a set of oils and a blank canvas set before him. He’s taken to paining again, falling in love with the laid back lifestyle of the town. He likes to paint the people, sometimes asking them if he could sketch them while they work, or just sitting at a coffee shop, drawing the random people that pass by (he absolutely loves the snapshots he takes in his head of their expressions in the five seconds they pass by his window).

He’s rummaging through Arthur’s desk trying to find a working pen when he sees it. It isn’t particularly hidden, but tucked neatly on the side and away from the clutter, like it used to be constantly touched or handled.

Eames gingerly picks it up, holds it aloft, and the flood of memories comes unbidden, one after another.

 

==

 

It had been the very first time he met Arthur in the dream.

“Shit, you’re telling me you’re not one of the projections we’ve been gunning down all day?”

Eames was _very_ tired and _very_ frustrated, and he was having none of this bullshit. Today’s mission had been particularly taxing, trying to repel projections from overtaking their small camp where they were trying to set up a solid defence perimeter. But they kept getting picked off one by one by a sniper they couldn’t find, and by the time the fourth member of their squad had gotten shot between the eyes, Eames decided to take matters into his own hands and find the goddamn bastard himself.

The problem was that he expected to be greeted by another mindless killing machine, just like every other projection they’d encountered. Instead he’d been led into a maddening game of cat and mouse inside a ten-story building with paradoxical stairwells and halls fashioned after a Mobius strip. Damn it all to fucking hell, because he’d have given his right arm then and there for a rocket launcher to blast the entire building to pieces.

It all came to an unexpected end when he found the man he was chasing standing in the middle of the hall (fuck knows what floor they ended up on) with his M39 hanging loosely by his side. His hands were raised halfway, hesitating as if he was thinking of either surrendering or drawing his sidearm.

Eames kept his rifle aimed at the bastard’s heart.

“I’m not a projection,” the man answered with a clear American accent. “I’m here on combat training, just like you.”

“And how do you know _I’m_ not a projection coming after you?” Eames continues with steely resolve. “How do you know I won’t just shoot you if you come out and surrender?”

“It was a chance I was willing to take,” the man answered calmly.

Eames kept glaring at the man for a moment longer, before finally spitting out a curse and lowering his rifle. “God fucking dammit,” he said. He would probably regret it, but their mission was already fucked up to begin with anyway. He quickly scanned their surrounding before motioning for the other man into one of the small rooms.

“All right,” Eames said as soon as they entered. “So you’re not a projection, but surely those bastards out there are?”

The man nodded, still eyeing Eames warily.

“Then what the hell are you doing shooting at us for?” Eames couldn't help but shout angrily.

“It was _my_ mission,” the man snapped back. “This is my dream. I was supposed to kill two birds by letting the rebel forces—the projections—run down the supposedly private military army— _you_ —”

“Yeah, I got that part,” Eames interrupted snidely.

“—before calling in an airstrike. But you were holding out and I had to do something. They never told me you were real.”

Eames scrubbed his face with a dirty hand. “This is all kinds of fucked up.”

“You’re telling me,” the man huffed.

“So, you’re the...what do they call them? The Architect? You built this whole place?”

The man smirked. “No, I’m just the subject of the dream, another architect created all this. Except for this building. I added this myself.” There was a hint of pride in his voice when he said this, Eames noted. But at Eames’s still befuddled look, he stopped. “Wait, you don’t know how this works, do you?”

“Fucking hell if I know, they just plug us in and we kill projections.”

It was the man’s turn to curse under his breath and Eames knew that this might take a while. He fired a quick command to his comm with a, “Pull out, this mission’s a bust,” and took out a dreamed-up pack of smokes from one of his pockets. The man raised an eyebrow at the sight. It was the first thing Eames was able to create in the dream world that wasn’t part of the specifications given to them during training and he was slightly proud of it.

He offered one to the man. “Eames,” he said by way of introduction.

“Arthur,” the other man replied and took a fag.

“Well, this is all kinds of fucked up, innit?”

“Tell me about it,” Arthur said, chuckling mirthlessly.

And it began like that. They were always trying to look for each other in dreams. Sometimes they met, but most of the time they didn’t. It was in one particularly fucked up mission where Eames was supposed to capture and interrogate Arthur that he told the other man of his plan.

“I’m getting out of here,” Eames said as casually as he could.

“What?”

“I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

Arthur nodded, not really surprised. As if he’d been thinking it himself for quite sometime, just as Eames had. “Maybe—” Arthur said, then stopped abruptly.

Eames looked inquiringly at him. It wasn’t like Arthur to hesitate.

Arthur cleared his throat and began again. “Maybe—I think we should try and meet up. In the real world, I mean.”

Eames considered this for a moment. It was something that he had thought about often. What would it be like to really finally meet Arthur topside? He wanted to, he really did. But he had long planned on going where Arthur might not want to follow, so he shook his head.

“I don’t think it’ll be a good idea,” Eames said. “When I get out of here, I plan on leaving all this behind. I—it’s not something you’d want to get into, I’d imagine.”

Arthur’s eye flashed dangerously. “What do you mean?”

“All I’m saying is that Capt. Charles Eames will be no more. I plan on erasing this life and live another.”

“No one can just throw away who they are,” Arthur protested. “Everything you’ve learned, everything you’ve been through—even this nightmare of an experiment—it what makes you uniquely you.”

“Darling, you say the sweetest things,” Eames said wryly.

Arthur ignored his jibe. “Do you think we’d ever have met if not for this new tech? Think about it, Eames.”

“Believe me, Arthur, meeting you is the only reason I can never regret joining this shitty experiment.”

Weeks later, news of a missing PASIV device reached Eames’s squad and the joint exercises had ceased immediately. They were sent back to England and the moment they landed, Eames began making preparations for his own escape.

When he finally did it, the very first thing he did was rip his dog tags from around his neck, drop them in the first skip he saw, and walk away without looking back.

 

==

 

If there was ever a time that Eames ever felt like his heart was being ripped from his chest, it was nothing compared to what he feels now. Eames curls into himself, clutching his old dog tags tightly around his fist and feeling the thin steel dig into his palm until it begins to bend. “Oh Arthur,” Eames whispers, voice cracking with emotion. “Oh love, you should have said something.”

A million questions speed through Eames’s mind as he counts back the years he’s spent with Arthur. How long had he been holding on to this? Where did he find them? Why hadn’t Arthur said anything? Why hadn’t _he?_

But the one thought that pierces like a dagger twisting in his heart is: _Since when?_

 

==

 

It takes several days before Eames is able to break out of the deep depression he has allowed himself to sink into, and many more before Helen is able to coax the story out of him. And when he finally tells her, the only thing she says is, “My son would’ve been an idiot not to have loved you, Charles.”

He’s taken to wearing his dog tags again, wanting to feel their heaviness near his heart. It’s maudlin, he knows, but it’s the closest thing he can ever have to Arthur. It’s still painful to think about what might have been between them.

But time eventually heals all wounds, and by the time spring rolls around, Eames is more than ready to take on the daunting task of finding Arthur’s safe houses and the rest of the aliases he goes by. He’s ready to return to dreamshare, if only to dispose of anything that Arthur might have left behind that can lead back to Helen, Sheila, or Michael and his family.

Arthur isn't there anymore, so it’s up to Eames to keep them safe.

He’s in his room trying to pack what he can in the small duffel he first came with when he hears a short stifled cry, followed by breaking glass. He instinctively grabs his gun, which he still keeps under the bed exactly for instances such as this (he’s not stupid; he’s been here for more than half a year but has never once become complacent—he’s still a wanted man, after all).

He creeps downstairs as quietly as he can. He knows Helen’s in the kitchen cooking—always cooking for him, as is her nature—and the broken glass could have been any other thing that had accidentally slipped. But the surprised cry is something Eames is familiar with and has heard far too many times than he cares to think. With a sinking feeling, he can't help but conclude that someone has finally found him.

He mentally tallies the things in the kitchen that Helen might use as a weapon. The set of knives that Eames has kept sharp, the heavy doorstop that they sometimes use to prop the kitchen door open, hell, even the thick frying pans can be used as deadly weapons when wielded correctly.

He approaches the hall that leads to the kitchen, leading with his gun and peeking cautiously from the corner. But the scene that greets him is something he could never have expected; no matter how often he insists that he has the biggest imagination in dreamshare.

Because at the moment, the entire world has disappeared and his gaze is focused solely on the person standing just inside the kitchen door:

Arthur.

Helen stands frozen, hands covering her mouth and shoulders trembling, and Arthur is just standing there, seemingly unaware of the distress he’s causing. His eyes are wild and he has that crazy look that he gets when he’s just pulled seventy-two hours of nonstop research. His hair is the longest Eames has seen, his bangs fall past his eyes, and he’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt that looks like they should have been washed days ago.

He looks a right awful mess, and as perfect as Eames remembers him.

Eames feels his knees buckle as he slumps back against the wall, trying to keep himself upright, while his other hand immediately digs into the pocket of his jeans trying to find his totem.

Oh, fuck, but he stopped carrying it with him weeks ago! And if he can’t prove that this is reality, then this must be a dream because _Arthur_ is here.

As if the glasslike moment is broken, Helen reaches out and tugs her son to her chest with a loud sob. She holds him so tightly against her and even when it becomes too hard for either of them to breathe, she still doesn't let go.

Then Eames hears his voice: small, distressed, and absolutely wrecked. The usual confident point man, always unflappable and always collected, is crying on his mother’s shoulder like a lost child.

“Mom,” Arthur says, hoarse and broken. “Mom, I lost someone.”

“Oh, my boy,” Helen soothes him, words falling from her mouth like a mantra. “My boy, my boy, my boy…”

Eames doesn’t know how long he’s been watching them. His eyes don’t leave them lest the image vanish like a mist. He feels his heart constrict inside his chest as he watches a mother reunite with a son long thought dead, and a son so in despair that he clings to the only thing he can come home to: his mother’s embrace.

“Mom,” Arthur is babbling now. “I can't find him. I _can’t_. I’ve done everything I can, I looked _everywhere_ , but it isn’t enough. _I’m_ not good enough. Mom, I don’t know what to do. I don't know what I’ll do if I can’t find him. Mom, _Mom_ …”

“Hush now; you’re home. You’re home. I’ll help you. Whatever you need, just tell me. I’ll help you. Hush.”

Arthur has never looked so sad, so _broken_.

And it pains Eames to see him this way even though his mind tells him this isn’t real. It _can’t_ be real because Arthur’s gone now, never mind that this projection of Arthur could never compare to the real one. But his traitorous heart doesn’t listen, and his chest continues to tighten at seeing the man this way. Eames feels the energy drain from his body, and he distantly hears the sound of his gun falling from his grip and clattering to the floor.

But the sound instantly alerts Arthur, and for the first time he looks up. Their eyes lock and Eames can't breathe.

“Eames,” Arthur whispers.

The sound is very faint, laced with wonder, disbelief, and not a small amount of fear that this might not be real. It’s the same voice that comes out of Eames as he whispers, “Arthur?”

And in a blink of an eye, Arthur’s face changes from wretched and grief-stricken to terrifyingly neutral. He gently pries his mother’s arms away and steps purposefully towards Eames. This sudden change takes Eames by surprise and he instinctively steps back.

“Eames,” Arthur says, this time with a deep voice, the same tone of voice that says ‘I’m going to decapitate you piece by piece and you will like it.’

It’s so achingly familiar that he’s sure. He _knows_ this is a dream but he can’t bring himself to care. He’ll take the dream as long as he can have Arthur.

“Darling,” is all he is able to say before Arthur’s fist, quick as lightning, collides with his jaw. He doesn’t even get the chance to duck. His last thought before he blacks out is, ‘ _that felt like reality.’_

 

==

 

“Oh my god, fuck you, Eames, _fuck you_.”

It's the first thing he hears when comes to.

“I don’t even know how the fuck you found my house and you’ve been hiding here _all this fucking time?!”_

“Language!” says a voice from the vicinity of the kitchen.

“Sorry, Mom,” he calls back. The voice is sheepish but the low hiss in his ear is filled with venom. “We will have words, Mr Eames,” Arthur promises. “I swear to God, there will be _words._ ”

Eames tries to blink his eyes open. The first thing he sees is the blurred silhouette of Arthur hovering above him, and as he scans his surroundings, he noticed that someone has moved him to the couch in the living room. His vision begins to clears a bit, and he can make out Arthur’s very angry face as he stares daggers at him. Eames reaches out and takes Arthur’s hand that’s dangling near his own. Arthur’s frown immediately melts into something that Eames might be tempted to call worry, if only he isn’t too concerned about getting punched in the face again.

‘This feels real,’ he murmurs. But the moment he opens his mouth, he feels the ache in his jaw and he winces, mangling the words.

“It better feel real, asshole,” Arthur says as he produces a package of frozen peas and slaps it unceremoniously on Eames’ face.

“Mrph hmrhh mmph.”

“I can’t hear you, and you’re not allowed to talk.”

Eames takes the bag of peas from his face with his right hand, his left still holding on to Arthur’s. He can feel the pads of Arthur’s fingertips, calloused from long years of handling weapons, the fine bones that feel delicate and lethal at the same time, and Arthur’s answering grip on his hand, slowly tightening and unwilling to let go.

Eames sits up slowly, scooting to one end of the couch, and he tugs at Arthur’s hand, making him sit on the other. He looks at their hands, and Eames sees it: a freshly healed burn mark on the inside of Arthur’s wrist.

“You were dead,” Eames says, voice hoarse and guarded.

He feels betrayed, seeing Arthur like this. Alive. After months of thinking he was dead. After long days and even longer nights trying to put back together the shattered pieces of his heart, only to be broken again.

If this isn't real, _if this isn’t_ …

And Arthur’s face crumples. The weight of his guilt sits heavy on his shoulders and his head is bowed in a plea for forgiveness.

“I know,” Arthur whispers softly. Contritely. “I’m so sorry.”

Eames looks away. “Why?”

Why didn’t you tell anyone you’re still alive? Where we you all this time? Did you know you broke Helen’s heart? Did you know Sheila still bought you a Christmas gift even though she knew she wouldn’t be able to give it to you? Why did it take this long for you to come home?

Why did you pretend you were dead? _Why did you let me believe it?_

All these questions Eames wants to ask, but his throat is closing and he can’t utter a single breath.

And yet Arthur still hears them all.

“I had to,” Arthur says, keeping his eyes fixed at Eames’s thumb still softly stroking the marks on his wrist, unwilling to look him in the eyes. “I had to make them believe I was dead so you and Dom could escape. Then I had to hide for a while and wait for things to cool off. But when I resurfaced, you were gone and I couldn’t reach Dom. And then—” Arthur finally looks up, unconcealed distress on his face, “—I couldn’t find you. You were gone, Eames, and I couldn’t find you,” he says the last words in a half broken whisper.

“But—I could have helped you. You _know_ I’d do anything for you, Arthur.”

Arthur shakes his head. “It was too dangerous. I couldn't risk—If anything were to happen to you…”

Eames’s eyes fall close on their own accord at hearing the words. It’s as if Arthur took the words from his mouth, and he can't hate Arthur for making them think he’s dead. He’d have done the same in a heartbeat if he could.

Eames takes a deep, shaky breath, and the movement causes him to feel the jangle of metal against his chest. Like a lifeline, he clutches at it through the fabric of his shirt. The edges dig into his palm, and he thumbs the place where the thin metal is bent from the last time he held them this tight.

It feels like a totem. An Arthur-shaped totem.

“Is that…?”

Eames opens his eyes to see Arthur leaning closer, carefully eyeing the chain around Eames’s neck. Eames can feel the heat of Arthur’s body so close to his, smell the faint traces of the woodsy smell of his aftershave that permeate even through his days-old shirt, and see the flecks of Arthur’s brilliant brown eyes as he hovers close.

It would have taken all the self-control in the world to stop Eames from leaning in and sealing their lips.

Arthur’s mouth is soft and pliant under his. He responds immediately at the first touch, and Arthur sighs against his lips. They kiss like that, softly and gently. A little tentative, a little fragile. A hundred ‘ _I’m sorry’s_ are said between them, a thousand ‘ _I forgive you’s_ in return.

Eames squeezes his eyes shut this time, unwilling to open them, afraid to find that this is all just a dream. He feels Arthur place one hand on his shoulder and grip tightly, as if _he’s_ the one afraid that Eames might vanish. Which is absurd, because it was Eames who’s been living a life without Arthur. And it isn't fair. _It isn't fair._

Eames surges forward, pressing his lips harder against Arthur’s, willing him to recognise the unfairness of it all. He wants to make Arthur promise never to leave again. He wants Arthur to swear he’ll still be there when Eames opens his eyes.

Arthur takes his other hand from Eames’s tight grip and lays it atop the hand holding his dog tags. His breath hitches when Arthur wraps his hand around Eames’s clenched fist.

Eames gives the tags one last squeeze before letting go and thinks: _reality._

He gently breaks off the kiss and open his eyes to see Arthur watching him apprehensively. As if awaiting a grim verdict. But Eames carefully strokes Arthur’s cheek with his knuckles and kisses away the lines on his forehead.

“Oh darling, I’ve missed you so.”

Arthur makes an incoherent sound of relief and launches himself at Eames, grabbing his face with both hands and kissing him hard this time. Arthur whispers his name against his lips like a prayer, chanting _Eames, Eames, Eames…_

Eames opens his mouth and allows Arthur’s tongue inside, finally tasting him. There is a touch of desperation in their kiss, like long separated lovers finding each other again. And yet, at the same time, Eames thrills at the feeling of discovering Arthur for the first time—the taste of his tongue, the softness of his hair as Eames rakes his hand through them, the feel of slender hips that he’s imagined touching for so long.

It’s new and familiar, this thing they’ve never allowed themselves to do.

Eames loves all the ways he’s learning Arthur’s body. How he responds to every touch, how he tries to bite back a moan but can’t, and how Arthur grips him tightly, not allowing any space between them.

Arthur presses close, all but crawling into his lap. Eames happily complies, leaning back to allow Arthur to swing one leg to straddle him. They press close, chest against chest, and Eames groans when he feels Arthur grind down against him. He can feel the hardness in Arthur’s trousers matching his own. He pulls Arthur’s hips closer, wanting more friction and—

“Boys.”

Helen’s cool voice interrupts them and they both freeze, before hastily springing apart because they’ve been making out in front of _Arthur’s mother_. Arthur’s face is beet red, and he can’t seem to look at Helen, who stands near the doorway to the kitchen.

“I was going to ask if you wanted something to eat…” Helen says, trailing off.

If it’s even possible, Arthur turns into a deeper shade of red with embarrassment. Eames doesn’t even try to stop the laughter that bubbles from his chest.

“Well,” Helen continues, “if you must fornicate, do it in Eames’s room in the attic. I’ve no plans of letting you leave the house just yet, Arthur.”

“Oh my God, _Mom!”_

The scandalized look on Arthur’s face is so priceless that Eames doubles over in laughter. Arthur whips around to glare at him before his face creases in confusion.

“Wait, what do you mean _his_ room?”

 

 

Epilogue:

 

They’re in the dining room again, and this time the family is complete. Eames has never felt so more at home than right now, with Arthur by his side.

Eames remembers the last time he sat he with the rest of Arthur’s family, talking animatedly and lightly teasing, as siblings are wont to do. Then Eames recalls Sheila’s story from last time.

“So, Corey Scott, huh?” Eames whispers teasingly in Arthur’s ear.

He had imagined Arthur would act scandalized, or possibly choke on his food, but instead he gives Sheila a dirty look. “You told him, didn’t you?”

“Oh, but it’s perfectly all right darling, I heard he was very fit,” Eames says trying to get a reaction from him.

Arthur just gives a deadpan look and says, “Edward Thatcher.”

Eames’s utensils clatter to his plate.

_“You did not.”_

Arthur’s face breaks into a huge smug grin. “Your mother is a very hospitable woman, generous with stories of you, even. Also, your sister wanted me to tell you that you are to bring three presents for her son’s eighth birthday since you missed Christmas _and_ his last birthday.”

Eames groans. “I guess we’ll be going to London next, then.”

“I already booked the tickets.”

“’Course you did.” Eames rolls his eyes fondly.

“Are we going to London, too?” Michael’s son asks, looking around excitedly.

Eames grins. “You certainly can if you want, sprog. And your Uncle Arthur will even buy your plane tickets and book your hotel rooms. He’s very good at doing things like that.”

“Eames!” Arthur scowls, but his dimple is showing and Eames knows that it’s the equivalent of Arthur jumping up and down in excitement.

“London! Oh, I’ve never been!” Helen says longingly.

“Mom, we can room together!” Sheila exclaims.

Arthur side-eyes him as if to say, “You started this,” but Eames can’t bring himself to care.

He takes Arthur’s hand under the table and traces the burn marks on the wrist, utterly grateful that he can feel Arthur’s pulse race under his fingertips.


End file.
